Installation view, ‘L’Atelier d’Artistes’, Hauser & Wirth at Frieze London, 2016. Photo: Ken Adlard
International Curatorial Residency Symposium 2019: Curating Private Art Collections
The International Curatorial Residency 2019, ‘Curating Private Art Collections’, coincided with the exhibition ‘Unconscious Landscape. Works from the Ursula Hauser Collection’ and presented five curators who oversee international private collections. The programme culminated in a public symposium entitled ‘Curating Private Art Collections’.
Participating curators included: Caroline Bourgeois, Principle Curator at The Pinault Collection (Venice, Italy); Wendy Chang, Director at The Rennie Collection (Vancouver, Canada); Jenny Moore, Director at The Chinati Foundation (Marfa, Texas); Skarlet Smatana, Director at George Economou Collection (Athens, Greece); and Jiyoon Lee, Founding Director at SUUM (Seoul, Korea).
Hauser & Wirth Somerset’s annual International Curatorial Residency brings together influential curators from around the world to spend five days immersed in the ethos and programming of the gallery. Beginning at Hauser & Wirth in London with visits to private collections, the itinerary will serve to encourage meaningful discussions about private collecting in today’s cultural landscape. With the intention of inspiring their creative discourse, the curators will experience the art, architecture, landscape and food of Durslade Farm, and will also have the opportunity to engage with artists, staff and members of the local community.
On the final day of the residency, the curators formed a public symposium: ‘Curating Private Art Collections’. The panel, each sharing their personal experiences and extensive knowledge, explored the practicalities, pleasures and politics of curating private collections in today’s cultural landscape, and what it means for the future. The symposium was chaired by art critic and journalist, Louisa Buck.
Curator Biographies
Caroline Bourgeois Caroline Bourgeois is the Principle Curator of the Pinault Collection since 2007. From 2004 to 2008, she was Artistic Director of the Plateau, a contemporary art centre in Paris where she curated several exhibitions. Prior to this in 2001, she worked on the production team of Pierre Huyghe’s artworks for the Biennale’s French pavilion together with the Pinault Collection. Bourgeois has also worked on a number of independent projects, including: the video program ‘Plus qu’une image’ for the first edition of the Nuit Blanche in Paris (2002); and the production of the video collection ‘Point of view: an Anthology of the Moving image’, in collaboration with the New Museum of Contemporary Art (2003).
Wendy Chang Wendy Chang has been the Director of the Rennie Collection since 2006 and is Founding Director of Rennie Museum. She formalized operations of the collection and established all aspects of the museum’s operations to support the bold and rapid growth of both. Under her stewardship, the museum has staged a diverse array of complex exhibitions with artists such as Martin Creed, Lara Favaretto, Mona Hatoum, and Kerry James Marshall. To realize the museum’s mandate of providing accessibility to arts and culture, she developed its internship, education and engagement programs. She also serves as catalogue series editor and lead designer, overseeing all facets of the publication program.
Prior to her current position, she worked extensively with leading institutions and collections worldwide, spending nearly fifteen years producing projects and presenting exhibitions with a diverse group of artists including John Baldessari, Glenn Brown, Dan Graham, Rodney Graham, Mike Kelley, Paul McCarthy, Juan Munoz, Shirin Neshat, Richard Prince, Edward Ruscha, Jeff Wall, Christopher Williams, Christopher Wool and Andrea Zittel.
Jenny Moore Jenny Moore is Director of The Chinati Foundation, a contemporary art museum founded by Donald Judd in Marfa, Texas. Comprised of 34 buildings on 340 acres, Chinati is one of the most significant installations of contemporary art in the world. In her five-year tenure, Moore has overseen completion of Robert Irwin’s ‘untitled (dawn to dusk)’, completed Chinati’s first master plan, and stewarded a 30% increase in visitorship annually.
Moore has over 20 years of experience in contemporary art, holding curatorial positions at the New Museum, Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and the 8th Gwangju Biennial. She has curated exhibitions of work by Donald Judd, Charlotte Posenenske, Peter Roehr, Charles Atlas, Ellen Altfest, Erika Vogt, and Stanya Kahn. She curated the group exhibition ‘Pictures from the Moon: Artists’ Holograms 1969–2008’, organized the New Museum’s presentation of ‘Rosemarie Trockel: A Cosmos’, and co-curated ‘NYC 1993: Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star’. Moore received an M.A. from the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, NY, and a B.A., cum laude, in cultural anthropology from Wake Forest University, NC.
Skarlet Smatana Skarlet Smatana is director of the George Economou Collection. Since taking this position in 2012, she has honed the objectives of the collection and spearheaded its exhibition program, contextualizing it within twentieth-century art historical and contemporary discourse. She often partners and collaborates with major public institutions and private foundations worldwide to promote publicly exhibited collections as well as philanthropic and lending initiatives to support contemporary artists.
At the George Economou Collection in Athens, Smatana has co-organised solo exhibitions of artists including Jeff Wall, Jenny Saville, Charles Ray, David Hammons, and Rashid Johnson, as well as a two-person show of Georg Baselitz and Paul McCarthy. Each of these exhibitions has been accompanied by a monograph featuring scholarly essays by acclaimed writers and curators.
Before joining the George Economou Collection, Smatana worked at the Peggy Guggenheim Museum in Venice as well as at leading contemporary art galleries, among them Pace Gallery, New York; Richard Gray Gallery, Chicago; and, as director, at L&M Arts, New York. Throughout her career in galleries and independently, she has built some of the most important collections worldwide and advised prominent institutions in the United States. Smatana has an MA in art history, theory, and criticism from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, focusing on postwar and contemporary art with a specialization in German art.
Jiyoon Lee Jiyoon Lee is an Art Historian, Curator and Founding Director of global curatorial project office SUUM since 2003 in London. With extensive knowledge and networks within international contemporary art ecosystems, her passion is to promote cultural understanding and collaboration between Europe and Asia in a global cultural context. She has curated and delivered more than 50 international exhibitions as an independent curator in Europe. In 2014, she was appointed as deputy director of new museum, MMCA (National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art museum) in Seoul, Korea until 2016.
She is also an active lecturer and speaker on the creative industries and art management, serving at Yonsei Business school as adjunct professor as well as being a regular contributor to JoongAng national newspaper and Forbes magazine.
